The full House Education Committee will hear a bill today that proposes raising the state’s drop-out age from 16 to 17. HB 932, sponsored by Rep. Tommy Benton, received a ‘Do Pass’ recommendation from the Education Subcommittee — Academic Support late Wednesday afternoon.
Benton presented the bill to his colleagues in the sub-committee, before students from various high school fielded questions from the committee. The students are part of the Fulton County Youth Commission — which also worked to have the bill passed last year.
Information presented by Benton and the students shows that while the state’s graduation rate is at 80 percent, Georgia remains four points below the national average in dropout rates.
“The state has tried many innovative approaches the keep kids in school, including dual enrollment and Move On When Ready,” said Benton. “Nothing seems to be working. We still have 20 percent of our high school population that is not graduating. We have to find a way to keep kids in school. While this may not be the silver bullet for everything, it may be another tool to try to keep them in school.”
In fielding questions from the subcommittee, students – ranging from freshman to seniors — brought out facts about the drop-out rate in the state and the impact it has on Georgia and the economy.
According to information presented, dropouts from the class of 2010 alone will cost the nation more than $337 billion in lost wages over the course of their lifetime. Also, according to information in the report “over the past 40 years, the annual median earned of men ages 25 to 62 fell by 28 percent largely due to the poor performance of high school dropouts in the labor market.”
The information presented also showed that states with a higher graduation rate higher than Georgia, have a higher drop-out ages of 17 and 18 years old — including Tennessee (89.1%) and South Carolina (82.6%). Both states have a drop-out age of 17.
While Benton and the students agreed that there would be an additional cost because of additional students in the schools, they compared the costs of educating a student (approximately $10,000 a year) to the costs of incarceration (approximately $30,000 a year).
